Something you might have spotted is the icons on the edge of each page. We’ve added these to make the Creature Collection as useful and as easy to use as possible.
Using these means we can keep the entire Collection alphabetised, so if you know the name of the creature you want, you’ll be able to find it easily.
If however you want some suggestions for suitable Challenge Ratings, or creatures that inhabit specific terrain? Then that’s where the page-edge icons can help!
The original monster book is back! In this free preview you can get a glimpse into the world of Scarred Lands, and the adversaries that await!
Onyx Path and Handiwork Games are bringing the very best of the various Creature Collections for 3rd Edition to 5e with all new art and fully converted text.
About Scarred Lands:
This is a world shaped by gods and monsters, and only the greatest of heroes can expect to be counted among them. The most populous continent of Scarn, Ghelspad, plays host to vast unexplored regions, hides unsolved riddles from ancient cultures, and taunts adventures with the promise of undiscovered riches hidden among the ruins of older civilizations.
Yet the myths of the Scarred Lands are relatively recent events. The effects of the Titanswar still ripple through the world, and the heroines and villains of many of these stories are part of living memory, if not still living.
This weekend we’re at UK Games Expo in Birmingham! We’ll be demoing and selling Forest Dragon Card Games from our compact and bijou corner of booth 1-361. Hope to see you there!
We’ve just added a selection of compact dice trays from our friends at All Rolled Up™ to the Handiwork store. These feature some classic art from Jon Hodgson, as well as some of his maps. As well as a hugely portable, practical, beautiful compact dice tray, they’re also a compact adventure!
The miniatures shown are available from Red Box Games, Footsore Miniatures, Wargames Foundry, Mantic and Oathmark, the scenery is from Iron Gate, Gripping Beast and Mantic, and they all come highly recommended!
While we prepare our next Designer Diary about BEOWULF, how about we tease you with some really beautiful graphics by Paul Bourne? This book is going to be gorgeous.
We’re working with Onyx Path to bring the best of the classic Creature Collections to 5e!
The first Creature Collection was the very first bestiary ever released for 3rd edition of the world’s favourite RPG, predating even the official Monster Manual. It was also the birth of Scarred Lands as a setting. Other volumes of foes followed, fleshing out the setting and providing a wealth of enemies for Scarred Lands games.
With the success of Scarred Lands Player’s Guide for 5e, we’re aiming to bring a big slice of adversaries to Kickstarter with Scarred Lands Creature Collection!
We really want to show off what you can expect, so before launch we’ve completed an initial 50 monsters. Not just converted them to 5e, but illustrated them with all new full colour art, and laid them out with some gorgeous new graphics. A whole bunch of those will be made available as previews to backers through the campaign. We’ll also be sharing some before we launch.
To whet your appetite, check out these first 3 spreads. We’re running final proofing on our text, so that’s obscured for now. In the coming days we’ll be beginning our full previews with some free monsters to enjoy!
Also to come is the preview of our navigation system. The overriding thing we heard from you, the 5e players, is that you want to be able to find what you’re looking for when using a bestiary. So in addition to several handy indexes created by topic, the Scarred Land Creature Collection will include a handy graphic navigation system to help you find adversaries to fit your needs, be they by terrain or Challenge Rating.
Gosh, it’s so busy at Handiwork HQ right now! We’re working on imagery for Runequest, and powering through conversions of all the great monsters found in the various Scarred Lands Creature Collections. We’ve been making art for the ever-awesome Monte Cook Games and doing some print consultancy for Nightfall Games. We’re also pulling together some really epic work for BEOWULF. Check this one out, which has been developing as we work!
BEOWULF provides epic one-to-one play for 5e in the world of ancient myth. We’ll be bringing it to Kickstarter this year.
We’ll have more detail on all our current projects in our next newsletter – be sure to sign up on our landing page: https://handiwork.games
We took the show on the road again this weekend, attending Conpulsion in Edinburgh.
Conpulsion is a games convention run by the Edinburgh University games club. It’s usually of a modest size, but has a really unique feel. As one of our local shows we’re keen to show Conpulsion some support.
This time out it wasn’t just Jon flying the Handiwork flag – on the booth we had help from Paul, Duncan and Rory.
It’s always hard to accurately assess exactly how busy or quiet a show is, but there seemed to be plenty of folk about and lots looking to try a new game.
We broke our previous convention selling record (of precisely one show, Airecon!), and Bang & Twang was definitely our hit of the weekend. That it won the hearts of many of the volunteers running the show was a huge help, with spontaneous games of Bang & Twang occurring around the venue. The Forest Dragon wasn’t far behind, and we brought a tiny fraction of our ambitious stock home with us! Yay!
Conpulsion is in no small part about catching up with friends. It was great to see Cat Tobin, Andy Hepworth, Gregor Hutton, Phil Harris, Shevaun Frazier, Brian Nisbet, and many more friends we’ve duly insulted by not naming here.
It was also a treat to make new friends! Paolo Grecco is making some fabulous books through his company Lost Pages. We thoroughly urge you to check out his beautiful little books.
The fine folk from Murphy’s Vault sold Rory (the designer of The Forest Dragon by Rory Age 9) his first ever Magic starter set, a copy of adorable card game Kodama: The Tree Spirts, and the D&D starter set. Which is all pretty exciting for Handiwork HQ! We’re a family business and the next generation of gamers is coming along nicely! The Murphy’s Vault team also picked up some trial packs of our games, so fingers crossed they enjoy them and stock loads!
Throughout the weekend Rory produced unique cards for The Forest Dragon which was pretty special. Hopefully he can remember what he made because there were some great ideas being spontaneously generated, and we probably have an expansion’s worth!
We donated one of each of our games and a set of coins to the charity auction, and they raised £90. Not too shabby!
There was amazing news at the annual Griffie Awards, hosted at the show. Bang & Twang won best new card game! Yay!
And then during the closing ceremony there was a display of weapons grade awkward as Jon was awarded the Banquo Award for the Spirit of Scottish Gaming. Jon has promised to make a better acceptance speech which contains some… content, in a video.
Looking ahead to next year we really hope to see more game makers at the show – it’s an ideal venue for small Scottish companies to share what they’re doing and make connections.
We had a great weekend, and we very much look forward to the next Conpulsion!
Our next show is Carronade in Falkirk! A surprisingly large games show for a small town! There’s a small but mighty contingent of boardgame and RPG stuff in amongst every last miniature or piece of gaming terrain you ever wanted to buy, spread across three or four halls. It’s bigger than you think! Maybe if you’re lucky enough to live within travelling distance of Falkirk we’ll see you there?
